In the visual arts, a series of related images or reports may be used for a variety of purposes. For example, in the motion picture industry, a series of related images taken at time intervals are later projected to generate the illusion of motion to a viewer. In the field of financial reporting, a series of related images (such as analytical reports) may be required to depict financial changes in a particular industry or company, or changes from one company to another or from one area to another. Regardless of the field, traditionally, a new image of comparable or similar size may be recorded and projected for certain intervals taken.
In the field of photography, the detection and treatment of shapes within an image or series of images has been sought. For example, certain technology by Sony Corporation permits the recognition of human faces and smiles by cameras. Also in the motion picture industry, the projection of background images, further away from a foreground subject, into composite images is possible. This is often accomplished by use of a backdrop color (as in “green-screen” technology) which a system is able to replace with a desired background image, which generally does not interfere with the foreground subject in a recorded composite image including the two.
More recently, augmented reality systems have been developed, which permit the synthesis of computer generated (“CG”) images with captured images from photographic sources, with the aid of marker objects recognized by the system which are used as a location point for projecting a computer-generated image. These systems result in the generation of composite images with both real-world and CG elements.
The present invention relates to techniques, systems and methods for more efficiently and more richly capturing, recording, transmitting, projecting and viewing both fixed and dynamic elements, image aspects or components (which terms can be used interchangeably in this application) of related images. The present invention also relates to new image formats, that may not have intervals or gaps and that may not rely on the persistence of vision for the appearance motion.
Generally speaking, images, sound and other sensed phenomena have been captured in digital formats and media, which have had several advantages over analog storage formats and media, including relative immunity to degradation and easy computation by digital computers. However, digital formats have the disadvantage of fixed and uniform stepped intervals, which noticeably reduces the quality of playback, projection and experience, particularly at high frequencies of sound or light waves, because higher frequency waves are thereby expressed with a more incomplete waveform shape than lower frequencies. In response, several digital-to-analog converters have been introduced into the market, which attempt to “smooth” the stepped intervals with interpolated data between the bits of digital data. But digital-to-analog conversion causes data degradation and, in any event, can never accurately restore the original form of the phenomenon recorded.